Holly Evans and the Alchemist's Stone

Chapter One: The Girl-Who-Lived

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Situations and themes from this chapter were highly paraphrased from JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and are not of my own creation.

Mr. and Mrs. Evans, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.

Mrs. Evans was the personal assistant for the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. She was a portly, round-faced woman with hardly any neck, whose bosom proceeded her like the prow of a ship. Mr. Evans was thin and blond and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in handy as he spent a great deal of his time craning over garden fences and around buildings to take pictures of visiting celebrities and selling them to the papers and on the internet. The Evans' had a small daughter called Daisy and in their opinion there was no finer girl anywhere.

The Evans' had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. And if that were to happen, well, they didn't think they could bear it.

Their secret had to do with Lindsay Evans, Mr. Evans' brother. Although the brothers had been close when they were children they hadn't met in several years. In fact Mr. Evans often pretended he didn't have a brother, because his brother, and his insouciant jezebel of a wife, were as irregular as Mr. and Mrs. Evans were normal. That was, they were highly, highly irregular indeed.

The Evans' shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if Lindsay Evans and his wife arrived in the street. The Evans' knew that Lindsay and Jane had a small daughter too, but they had never seen her. This girl was another perfectly good reason for keeping Lindsay and Jane away; they didn't want Daisy mixing with a child like that.

When Mr. and Mrs. Evans woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday morning on which our story begins, there was nothing about the cloudy sky that would suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country.

Mr. Evans hummed as he reviewed a drive filled with photos of the latest young starlet in flagrante delicto with a member of parliament at least thirty years her senior on his computer, and Mrs. Evans barked out a sharp scold to: "Put that bloody machine away and feed your child!" as she wrestled a screaming Daisy into her high-chair.

None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window.

At half-past eight Mrs. Evans picked up her briefcase, pecked Mr. Evans on the cheek, and tried to kiss Daisy goodbye but missed, because Daisy was now having a full-blown tantrum and throwing her cereal at the walls.

"Peter, darling, your daughter is screaming, put that away, I mean it! I have to get to work!" Mrs. Evans repeated.

She shrugged into her smart, grey blazer and slipped her pudgy feet into her sensible heels and rushed out the door.

She got into her car and backed out of number four's drive.

As she rolled up to the corner of the street she noticed the first sign of something peculiar—a cat reading a map. For a second Mrs. Evans didn't realize what she'd seen—then she jerked her head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there, of course, wasn't a map in sight. What could she have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light.

Mrs. Evans blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mrs. Evans drover around the corner and up the road, she watched the cat in her rearview mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive—no, looking at the sign; cats, after all, didn't read maps or signs.

Mrs. Evans gave herself a little shake and put the cat out of her mind.

As she drove towards town she received a call from the vice-president's assistant, and, popping her Bluetooth into her ear so that she could talk freely, she concentrated on nothing but the large order of drills they were expected to receive that day.

But, on the edge of town, drills were driven out of her mind by something else.

As she sat in the usual early morning snarl of commuter traffic, chatting with Wendy, the vice-president's assistant, she couldn't help but notice that their seemed to be a great deal of strangely dressed people about.

"Wendy are you seeing this?" she asked her friend, her voice taking on a clear note of disapproval as she took in all of hideous outfits adorning the passersby.

"If you're talking about the ridiculous profusion of cloaks about this morning then yes, I've seen them."

"I can't abide people who dress in supposedly funny clothing!" Mrs. Evans' exclaimed, "The getups you see on young people nowadays!"

"It's just a stupid new fashion, Verona, they'll be out of vogue just as quickly, no need to get your knickers in a twist," said Wendy, the vice-president's assistant, a hint of laughter in her voice.

Mrs. Evans frowned out her front windshield, although she did consider Wendy a friend, the woman could be shockingly liberal for someone who was meant to be the vice-president's own personal assistant. Some days she had no clear notion of how Wendy had managed to make it as far as she had with her attitude.

"I suppose," she agreed reluctantly, all the same, since she didn't want to start a row in the middle of traffic, before the day had even properly begun.

"Look Verona I have to go, Mr. Sanders is here, I'll talk to you later. Try not to let them bother you too much."

And with a soft click the line disconnected.

Still obliged to wait to move forward, Mrs. Evans tried to occupy herself by drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and her eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were all whispering excitedly together.

Mrs. Evans was quite incensed to see that a couple of them weren't young at all; why that woman had to be older than she was, and yet there she stood wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of her!

But then it struck Mrs. Evans that this was probably some silly stunt like that nonsense with the tape for those homosexuals and the little pink ribbons everyone went around wearing last month to raise money for cancer or somesuch—yes, these people were obviously collecting for something.

The traffic moved on and, pleased with her deductions, Mrs. Evans arrived in the Grunnings car park a few minutes later, her mind back on drills.

Mrs. Evans always sat facing into the hall at her station outside the director's office on the ninth floor. If she hadn't she might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning.

As it was she didn't see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gawped open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl before in their lives, not even during the nighttime.

Mrs. Evans, however, had a perfectly typical, owl-free morning. She made several trips to the staff-room on the twelfth floor for coffee, yelled at five different lollygaggers from accounting, made several important telephone calls, and shouted a bit more. She was in a very good mood until lunchtime, when she had the thought to stretch her legs and big and walk across the road to by herself a bun from the bakery.

She'd managed to forget entirely her annoyance with the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker's. She eyed them angrily as she passed. She didn't know why, exactly, but they made her uneasy, and she drew her purse closer to her side although it offered nothing in the way of protection and she doubted anyone would be so bold as to try and take it from her in the middle of the crowded street, no matter how oddly dressed.

This bunch were whispering excitedly too, and she couldn't spot a single flyer, form or collecting tin. The slackers. It was on her way back past them, clutching and extra-large jelly-filled doughnut in a bag, that she caught a few words of what they were saying.

"The Evans', that's right, that's what I heard, yes, their daughter, Holly—"

Mrs. Evans stopped dead, her blood all but freezing in her veins. She glanced back at the whisperers and thought of saying something to them, but thought better of it.

She all but dashed back across the road, hurried up to her floor, snapped at the intern who tried to ply her with coffee and barricaded herself in the staff washroom.

She had his the speed dial on her cellphone and it was vibrating in her palm letting her know that she was in the process of calling Mr. Evans. Abruptly she hit cancel, changing her mind. She tucked the phone back into the inner pocket of her blazer and smoothed her trembling hands over her skirt, brushing away invisible flecks of dust, thinking. She was being stupid, she decided, examining her reflection in the mirror critically. Evans wasn't an unusual name, why, she and Peter weren't even the only Evans' in their neighbourhood. She was sure that there were plenty of people with the surname Evans who had a daughter called Holly. In fact, she wasn't even entirely certain her niece was called Holly. She'd never even seen the girl. It might have been Heather. Or Harriet.

There was no point in worrying Mr. Evans; he always got terribly upset at any mention of his brother.

She didn't blame him either—if she'd had a brother like that—but all the same those people in cloaks…

She found it immeasurably more difficult to concentrate on drills that afternoon and when she left the building at five o'clock sharp she was still so worried about the whole mess that she walked straight into someone just outside the door.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said stiffly, as the tiny old lady stumbled and nearly fell.

It was a few seconds before Mrs. Evans realized that the woman was wearing a violet cloak embroidered with pink posies. She didn't seem at all put out about being nearly knocked to the ground. On the contrary, her face split into a wide grin and she said, at a volume that suggested at least partial deafness and made passersby stare, "Don't be sorry, my dear girl! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has been defeated at last! Even muggles like yourself should be celebrating on this most joyous of days!"

And the old woman, tossed her wizened arms around Mrs. Evans and squeezed her with a sudden fierceness and tottered off.

Mrs. Evans stood rooted to the spot. She had been hugged by a complete stranger and she was also quite certain she'd been called a muggle, whatever that was meant to imply. She was quite rattled.

Hurrying to her car she set off for home as quickly as possible, hoping against hope that she was simply imagining things, which was something she's never hoped before in her life, because she most certainly did not approve of imagination.

As she pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing she saw—and it did nothing at all to improve her mood—was the tabby cat she'd spotted that morning. It was now sitting on her garden wall. She was positive it was the same cat, it had precisely the same funny markings about its eyes that made it look as though it was wearing spectacles.

"Shoo!" said Mrs. Evans at top volume, she considered picking up a stone and tossing it at the wayward feline but since Mrs. Number Six disapproved of violence against animals she refrained.

The cat, for its part, fixed her with a stern look and didn't move even an inch. Was that normal cat behaviour? Mrs. Evans wondered, trying to pull herself together.

Fumbling for her keys she let herself into her house. She was still determined not to mention anything to her husband.

Mr. Evans had had a nice normal day. He arrived home at half-six with take away and told her over dinner all about the scandal that was about to erupt on the news because it had been discovered that some foreign actor had been engaging in relations of a carnal nature out in broad daylight, and how Daisy had learned a new word ("Shan't") and had been using it all day at the daycare according to Mrs. Polkiss.

Mrs. Evans tried her best to behave as though there weren't anything amiss. When Daisy had been put to bed she went into the living room in time to catch the last report on the evening news:

"And finally, bird-watchers across the country have reported that the nation's owls have been behaving most unusually today. Although owls typically only come out to hunt at night and are almost never seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sighting of these birds, flying in every direction, since sunrise this morning. Experts are unable to explain this sudden radical change in behaviour, but, as usual they are cautioning that it might be a side-effect of global climate change." The newscaster allowed herself a grin. "Most mysterious. And now, over to Jen McGuffin with the weather. Are there going to be anymore showers of owls tonight, Jen?"

"Well, Tess," said the weathergirl, "I don't know anything about that but it's not only the owls that have been acting oddly today, I can tell you that much. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire, and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they've had a downpour of shooting stars! Well, we certainly can't chalk that up to global climate change now, can we? Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early—it's not until next week folks! But I can definitely promise you a wet night tonight as we get a cold front rolling in from the northeast—"

Mrs. Evans was glued to the settee. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying in broad daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks wandering about town? Combining all those different things with a whisper about a family called Evans—

Mr. Evans came into the living room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He'd have to say something. A bit nervously she took a sip of her tea and cleared her throat.

"Er—Peter, dear—you haven't perchance heard from your brother lately, have you?"

As she'd expected, Mr. Evans looked shocked and angry. After all, they had entered into an unspoken agreement in the early years of their marriage to pretend as though he didn't have a brother.

"No," he said sharply, setting his teacup down with a definitive clink, "Why?"

"Nothing to concern yourself with," Mrs. Evans hastened to reassure him, "It was just some funny reports on the news, and there were some people in town today—"

"So?" snapped Mr. Evans.

"Well, I just had the thought that it might—potentially—have something to do with…well, you know. His lot."

Mr. Evans' brows drew together most forebodingly and he didn't even look at Mrs. Evans for a long while. Mrs. Evans wondered if she dared tell him she'd heard the name Evans being bandied about by the people in cloaks? Another darting glance at his face told her that she didn't dare. Instead, she took another fortifying sip of her tea and asked, as casually as she could manage, "Their girl—she'd be about Daisy's age now, wouldn't she?"

"I suppose," said Mr. Evans stiffly.

"What was her name again? Hattie, isn't it?"

"Holly. Nasty, common name, if you ask me."

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Evans, hear heart sinking horribly, "Yes, you're quite correct, dear."

She didn't say another word on the subject but the atmosphere in the living room remained tense. Mrs. Evans just counted herself lucky that he hadn't gone straight for the gin after she'd been bold enough to make a mention like that.

When they went upstairs to bed, though, Mr. Evans locked himself in the bathroom for a good long while. Mrs. Evans slipped into her nightgown, the flannel one with the ruffles that Mr. Evans liked because in was soft and flattering, and crept over to the window, peering down into the front garden.

The cat was still there, standing stock still and staring fixedly down Privet Drive as though it were waiting for something.

Was she really sure she wasn't making more of this than it was? Could all of this have nothing at all to do with her in-laws? If it did though, if it did have something to do with them, if it got out that they were related to a pair of—well, she didn't think she could stand it.

The Evans' got into bed.

Mr. Evans fell asleep quickly, his hands fisted in the excess material of Mrs. Evans' nightdress, snoring quietly against the back of her neck. But Mrs. Evans lay awake, her mind conjuring all kinds of horrific scenarios with nothing to distract her. Her last, and most comforting thought of the day before she fell asleep, was that even if her in-laws just happened to be involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mr. Evans.

Those two knew very well what she and Peter thought about them and their kind. She could not see how she and Peter could get mixed up in anything that may or may not be going on—she yawned and turned over—it couldn't affect them…

How very wrong she was.

Mrs. Evans might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall was showing no signs of sleepiness. It was still perched, still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive.

It didn't so much as twitch the tip of its tail when a car door slammed on the next street over, nor when two owls swooped overhead, hooting softly. In fact it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all.

A woman appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you'd have thought he'd just popped out of the ground. Then the cat's tail twitched minutely, and its eyes narrowed.

Nothing like this woman had ever been seen on Privet Drive. She was tall, indecently tall for a woman, thin, and very old, judging by the deep crags of her face and the silver of her hair which hung in a long rope of a braid past her waist, the two silver bells tethered to the end of it chiming softly as it swayed with her gait.

She was wearing long robes and a purple cloak that swept the ground and high-heeled boots with big silvery buckles. Her eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and her nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. Very unbecoming. This woman's name was Alba Dumbledore.

Alba Dumbledore didn't seem to realize that she'd arrived in a street where everything from her name to her boots was unwelcome. She was too busy rummaging in the sleeve of her robes, looking for something. But she did seem to realize she was being watched, because she looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at her from the other end of the street. For some unknown reason, the sight of it seemed to amuse her.

She chuckled and muttered, "I might have known."

She found what it was she was looking for reaching deep into the folds of her sleeve with a triumphant expression. It seemed to be a fanciful silver cigarette lighter. She flicked it open, held it up in the air and clicked it.

The nearest street lamp went out with a soft whoosh. She clicked it again—the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times total did she click the Put-Outer, until the only lights left on the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the reflective eyes of the cat, still watching her intently.

If anyone were to look out their window now, even the beady-eyed Mr. Evans with his telephoto lenses, they wouldn't have been able to see anything that was happening down at street level.

Dumbledore slipped her curious little device back into her sleeve and set off down the street towards number four, her bells chiming and her boots clicking. She settled down on the wall next to the cat. She didn't look at it right away but after a moment she spoke to it.

"Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall."

She turned to smile at the tabby, but it had vanished. Instead she was smiling at a rather severe-looking gentleman who was wearing rectangular glasses, exactly the shape of the markings the cat had sported around its eyes. His long black hair was drawn into a tight queue. Despite all of his outward neatness his expression was distinctly ruffled.

"How did you know it was me?" he asked.

"My dear Professor, I have never once seen a cat sit so stiffly."

"You'd be stiff too if you'd been sitting on a brick wall all day," said Professor McGonagall with a huff.

"All day? When you could have been celebrating?" chided Dumbledore, "I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here."

Professor McGonagall glowered out into the night, "Oh, yes, everyone is celebrating, all right," he said impatiently, "You'd think after everything that they'd be a bit more careful, but no—even the muggles have noticed something's not right. It was on their news tonight." He jerked his head back at the Evans' dark living room window. "I hear the whole thing. Flocks of owls. Shooting stars. Well, there are limits to even a muggle's ability to deny what's right in front of their nose. They were bound to notice something. Blasted shooting stars of all things! The one's down in Kent will be Dedalus Diggle's doing mark my words. He never did have much sense."

"You can't blame them," said Dumbledore gently, "We've had precious little to celebrate for eleven years."

"I know that," said Professor McGonagall irritably, "I was there too, in case you forget. But that's no excuse to lose our heads now. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even attempting to blend in with the muggles, swapping rumors."

He threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping that she would interrupt him, but she didn't so he soldiered on.

"A fine thing it would be if, on the very day You-Know-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the muggles found out about our world. I suppose she really has gone, Alba? You'd be the first to correct the reports if he wasn't, right?"

"I would," she agreed, dipping her head, "And it certainly seems that the reports are at least marginally accurate in this case. We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a lemon drop?"

"A what?"

"A lemon drop. They're a kind of muggle sweet I'm rather fond of."

"No, thank you," said Professor McGonagall with frosty politeness, as though he didn't think that this was the proper time from lemon drops, "As I was saying, even if You-Know-Who really is gone this time—"

"My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call her by her name? All this 'You-Know-Who' nonsense has gone on quite long enough—for years now I have been trying to persuade people to call her by her proper name: Voldemort."

Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, engrossed in the task of unsticking two lemon drops, seemed not to notice his discomfort.

"It all gets so confusing if we keep saying 'You-Know-Who'. What if we do not, in fact, know who? No, I have never seen any reason to be continually frightened of using Voldemort's name.

"I know you haven't," said Professor McGonagall, half exasperated, half admiring, "But you're different. Everyone knows that you are the only one You-know—oh, very well, Voldemort, was frightened of."

"You flatter me," said Dumbledore calmly, "Voldemort had powers that I will never possess."

"Only because you're too—well—noble-minded to seek them out."

"It's lucky it is quite dark, I don't believe I have blushed so much since Powell Pomfrey told me he liked my new earmuffs."

Professor McGonagall turned his eyes skyward briefly before favoring Dumbledore with another sharp look, "The owls are nothing next to the rumors that are flying around. You know what everyone is saying don't you? About why she's disappeared. About what finally stopped her?"

It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the limit of his formidable patience and was intent on covering the topic that he was most anxious to discuss, immediately. The real reason he had been waiting on a cold, hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a man had he fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as he did just then.

It was clear that whatever 'everyone' was saying, he was not about to believe it until Dumbledore was the one who told him it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another lemon drop and did not answer.

Professor McGonagall was generous, he waited a full thirty seconds for Dumbledore to answer him before pressing, "What they're saying is that last night Voldemort turned up in Greta's Hollow. She went to find the Evans'. The rumor is that Lindsay and Jane Evans are—are—that they're—dead."

Dumbledore bowed her head.

Professor McGonagall choked on his next words, shaking his head.

"Lindsay and Jane—I can't—I didn't want to believe it."

"I know," said Dumbledore, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder, "I know, Miles. I hadn't wanted to believe it either but…"

Professor McGonagall cleared his throat, blinking the moisture out of his eyes stubbornly, "That isn't the end of it though. There's more. They're saying that she tried to kill their child, their daughter Holly. But—she couldn't. She couldn't kill that little girl. No one is saying why, or how, but they are saying that when she couldn't kill Holly Evans, Voldemort's power somehow broke—and that that's why she's gone."

Dumbledore hesitated over her words before finally electing just to nod glumly.

"It's—that bit's true as well?" asked Professor McGonagall, his voice faltering, "After all she's done, all the people she's killed, she couldn't manage a little girl not yet out of nappies? It's just—it's astounding, of all the things, of all the people to stop him, but how in Merlin's name did Holly survive?"

"We can only speculate," said Dumbledore, "We may never know for certain."

Dumbledore gave a great sniff, dabbing at her eyes with a lacy pink handkerchief, and took a golden watch on a slender chain out from under her robes and examined it. It was a very odd watch. It had twelve hands but no numbers; instead, little planets were moving around the edge. Still, Dumbledore must have been able to make sense of it, because she tucked it away and said, "Ruby is late. I suppose it was she who told you I'd be here, by the way?"

"Yes," agreed Professor McGonagall, "And I don't suppose you're going to tell me why you've come here, of all places?"

"I have come to bring Holly to her uncle and aunt. They're the only family she has left now."

"You don't mean—you cannot possibly mean the people who live in this house?" demanded Professor McGonagall, leaping to his feet and pointing one accusing finger at number four, "Alba, you can't! I've been watching them all day. You could not find two people less open-minded if you scoured the globe for years. And their child—I saw her kicking her father all the way up the street, screaming for sweets at the top of her voice. Holly Evans come and live here! You must be off your head!"

"It is the best place for her," said Dumbledore firmly, "Her aunt and uncle will be able to explain everything to her when she's ready. I've written them a letter."

"A letter?" repeated Professor McGonagall, arching a dubious brow and folding his arms across his chest, "Alba, really, you can't expect to explain all of this sufficiently in a letter! These people will never truly understand her! She'll be famous—a legend—there will be books written about her, maybe even a national holiday, every child in our world will know her name!"

"Exactly," said Dumbledore, looking very serious over the top of her half-moon glasses, "It would be enough to turn any child's head. Famous before she can walk or talk. Famous for an act that she will not even remember. Can't you see how much better of she'll be, growing up away from all of that pressure until she is ready to take it?"

Professor McGonagall opened his mouth to protest, then changed his mind and pressed his lips into a thin line, "I will defer to your judgement, Alba, but I do not agree that this is the best choice."

"You worry too much, Miles. It was a very extensive, thorough and carefully-worded letter," said Dumbledore with a small smile.

Professor McGonagall was less amused.

"Very well. But how is the child getting here, Alba?"

"Ruby is bringing her."

"Do you think it wise? To trust Ruby with something as important as this?"

"I would trust Ruby with my life," asserted Dumbledore.

"I am not saying her heart's not in the right place, Ruby is as much my friend as she is yours," said Professor McGonagall, hands raised in the universal gesture of surrender, "But you cannot pretend she's not careless. She tends to—what was that?"

A low rumbling sound had broken the silence around the. It grew steadily louder as they looked up and down the street for some sign of a headlight; when it swelled to a dull roar they finally both looked up at the sky—and a frankly enormous motorcycle fell out of the air to land right in front of them, bouncing slightly as its tires hit the pavement.

And if the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing compared to the woman sitting astride it. She was at almost twice as tall as an average man and at least three times as wide. She looked simply too big to be real, and so very wild—long tangles of bushy black curls framed her wide expressive face, and she grinned as she swung one long, long leg over the side of the motorcycle, a bundle of blankets held fast in the crook of one arm.

"Ruby," said Dumbledore, sounding relieved, "At last. Where is the name of Merlin did you acquire that motorcycle?"

"Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore, ma'am," said the giantess, tossing her unruly hair out of her eyes, "Young Adhara Black lent it to me."

"No problems I trust?"

"No ma'am—house was almost destroyed, but I got her out all right before the muggles started swarmin' around. She fell right asleep as we was flyin' over Bristol."

Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall bent forward over the bundle of blankets. Inside, just barely visible, was a baby girl fast asleep. Under a tuft of jet-black hair over her forehead they could see an oddly distinctive cut, shaped like a bolt of lightning.

"Is that where—"

"Yes, it would seem so, if I were to venture a guess I would say she'd have that scar forever. Dark magic does not lend itself to easy healing."

"Couldn't you do something about it Alba? Shame to mar such a pretty face."

"Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee for example which is a perfect map of the London Underground. Well—give her here, Ruby—we'd best get this over with before it grows much later."

Dumbledore took Holly into her arms, carefully, and turned towards number four.

"Could I—could I say goodbye to her, Professor?" asked Ruby.

Dumbledore paused obligingly at the edge of the walk. She bent her great shaggy head over Holly and gave her a delicate kiss on her cap of downy black hair.

She pulled away with obvious reluctance and then, quite suddenly, let out a howl like a wounded dog.

"Shhh!" hissed Professor McGonagall, "You'll wake the muggles!"

"S-sorry," blubbered Ruby, pulling a large spotted handkerchief out of her coat pocket and burying her face in it, "But I just can't stand it—Lindsay and Jane dead—an' poor little Holly of ter live with muggles—"

She broke off with another gasping sob and Professor McGonagall did his best to pull her into an embrace, patting her somewhat stiffly on the back while she cried into the joint between his neck and shoulder, nearly squeezing the breath out of him as she hugged back.

"Yes, yes, it's all very sad, but get a grip on yourself, Ruby, or we'll be found," Professor McGonagall wheezed.

Dumbledore left them standing there on the edge of the walk and continued up to the front door. She laid Holly gently on the doorstep, waving her hand and muttering a few words over her bundle of blankets. She drew a letter out of her sleeve. It was tucked into a thick creamy envelope and addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Evans of number four Privet Drive in looping emerald green cursive. Dumbledore settled it among the blankets, and then made her was back to the other two.

For a full minute the three of them stood and looked at the little bundle. Ruby's shoulders shook, Professor McGonagall blinked furiously every few seconds, and the twinkling inner light that usually shined from Dumbledore's eyes seemed to have gone out.

"Well," said Dumbledore finally, "That is that. We've no business staying here. We may as well go and join the celebrations."

"Yeah," agreed Ruby in a very muffled voice, pulling away from Professor McGonagall reluctantly, "I'll be taking Addie back her bike. G'night, Professor McGonagall—Professor Dumbledore."

Tucking her handkerchief back into her pocket Ruby dried her eyes with a few rough swipes with the back of her coatsleeve, and swung herself back up onto the motorcycle. She kicked the engine back to life and with a deafening roar it rose up into the air and set off into the night.

"I shall see you quite shortly I expect Professor McGonagall," said Dumbledore, nodding to him, "I have a meeting with the Ministry representatives and the Board of Governors tomorrow, it is high time that Hogwarts re-opened."

Professor McGonagall gave no reply, his throat choked with unshed tears.

Dumbledore turned and walked back down the street. On the corner she stopped and took out her fanciful silver Put-Outer. She clicked it once, and twelves balls of light zipped back along the street into their proper lamps so that Privet Drive suddenly glowed warmly and she could make out a tabby cat slinking around the corner at the other end of the street. She could just see the edge of the bundle of blankets, swathed in shadow on the stoop of number four.

"Good luck, Holly," she murmured.

She turned sharply on her heel and with a swish of her cloak, she was gone. As though she'd never been at all, not even a breath of air to announce her departure.

A cool November breeze ruffled the neat lawns and hedges of Privet Drive, which lay, silent and tidy as ever under the star-spotted sky. The very last place you would expect astonishing and impossible things to happen.

Holly Evans rolled over inside her blankets, still fast asleep. One small hand closed over the letter beside her and she slept on, not knowing she was special, not knowing she was famous, not knowing that she would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Evans' scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that she would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by her cousin Daisy.

She couldn't know that at that very same moment, people were meeting, in secret and in public, all over the country. That they were holding up their glasses and cheering in hushed or bellowing voices: "To Holly Evans—the girl who lived!"

AN_IMPORTANT: So, I started this story as a kind of experiment. The entire universe of Harry Potter has been Rule 63'd. This means that Canonically male characters are now female and canonically female characters are now male. (For simplicity's sake this story assumes that the majority of presented characters are cis-sexual).

Additionally, I have decided to see how AU I can make this by making this a partially reader-driven plot. Basically it's like a choose your own adventure book. At the end of each chapter I will wait for comments about what to include in the next chapter and then based on the kind of responses I get (and with the understanding that I will choose whether or not a certain suggested plot point is feasible and realistic or not) I will write the next chapter.

Clear as mud?

I'll also post prompt questions that you can answer via review or PM.

For next time: Should Daisy be as spoiled as Dudley? Do they still have her party at the zoo?

Apart from that please take some time and tell me what you think of my writing itself or ask questions. I'm always looking for ways to improve!

Til next time

-Berry